near to him with the language of the returning Prodigal: "Father, I have sinned against Heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son." But so far from this being the case, so far from the overtures of Divine mercy being eagerly embraced, it is God who continues to entreat, while man obstinately refuses submission. "I beseech you, for Christ's sake," says an Apostle, "be ye reconciled to God." Yet, whether spoken to or corrected, whether warned or invited, too many neglect to draw nigh to their Creator; to Him, " in whose presence is fulness of joy, and at whose right hand there are pleasures for evermore," and whom, therefore, it is their highest honour and privilege to become acquainted with, as their best friend and the object of their brightest expecta

tions.

Such, then, is the mercy of God, and such the insensibility of man; such the condescension of the Most High, and such the proud, rebellious spirit of his frail and guilty creature; such the care of our Creator and Almighty Benefactor that we may not perish, and such the indifference of too many of us to the value of our own immortal souls. Let us reflect with sorrow upon our past folly and ingratitude; let us listen to the voice of God; let us humbly bow beneath his corrections, and learn the lessons they were designed to teach; let us trust in him, and draw nigh to him; and let us implore the grace of his Holy Spirit to strengthen in us these holy resolutions, and to bring them to good effect. Knowing the fearful terrors of the Lord, of which all the corrections hitherto administered, to check our disobedience, are but a very small part, let us become reconciled to Him before it be too late. Knowing also, on the other hand, his infinite compassion and loving kindness; his ability and willingness to make us happy, to pardon our sins, to renew and sanctify our hearts, to guide us with his coun

sel upon earth, and to receive us to his glory in heaven; let us "resolve, from these mercies of God, to present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto him, which is our reasonable service; and let us not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our mind, that we may prove what is that good and acceptable, and perfect will of God."

Tothe Editorofthe Christian Observer. IT is good now and then to pick up an arrow which is thrown from the enemy's camp, and use it for our own purposes of warfare. To such an end, I think, the following letter may be applied, written by the profligate Lord Lyttleton, or at least published as his, after his death, in

that small volume which bears such strong internal evidence of containing the genuine productions of a most accomplished debauchee.

It appears from the letter, that his lordship's correspondent had endeavoured to reason him out of his dissolute and unhappy mode of life. The answer will prove, out of the mouth of one who speaks from experience, the utter insufficiency of bringing mere moral arguments, founded on the fitness of things and the beauty of virtue, to oppose the seductions of sensual pleasure, and the fury of indulged passion. Feelings can only be successfully attacked by feelings;-the fears which are connected with a future state must be arrayed in the vivid distinctness of Scriptural language, if they are to bear down all thought of the trouble and pain of reformation; and the hopes which are full of immortality must not be left dim and indefinite, like the shadowy and dreamy visions of the ancient philosophers, but must borrow light as well as existence from Heaven, that their smiles may put to shame those by which vice, in the deceitful mask of pleasure, has long fascinated and enslaved the heart. In short, it

must strike the most careless reader of Lord Lyttleton's letter, that there was but one Voice that could have been heard and owned by him, in the midst of that storm of passions in which all human sounds of warning or encouragement were broken and lost; that Voice which spake to sinners of old, "O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in me is thy help." Had he but heard this from his friend-had the only way of escape been pointed out to him judiciously and clearly-had he but once embraced the idea of Divine aid, the solution of all that perplexed him, the world might have had cause to hold his name in reverence, instead of abhorrence; and Christianity might have found in him a champion whose experimental knowledge of her peculiarities would have bade him consecrate, like his father, to her despised cause talents of the highest order, and powers of composition which have rarely been excelled. It makes one sad to think how different to what it actually was, might have been the tale of his death, and how the cloud that now rests on his destinies might have been cleared away. But I will not longer detain your readers from the letter itself.

B. C.

Letters of the late Lord Lyttleton. Lond. 1816.

LETTER III.

"Your letter, which I received no longer ago than yesterday, would do honour to the most celebrated name among the moral writers of any period. It is the most sensible, easy, and concise, history of the passions I have ever read. Indeed, it had not been my lot to have given any great portion of my time to such studies. These powers have kept me too much in the sphere of their own tumultuous whirlwinds to leave me the leisure of examining them. I have been, am, and I fear shall be, their sport and their slave; and when I shall acquire that serenity of character which will enable me to examine them with

a philosophical scrutiny, I cannot tell. My expectations are at such a distance upon this point, that I am almost ashamed to mention my apprehensions to you. It is, however, treating you with the confidence you deserve, to tell you, that from my soul I think the very source of them must be dried up before they will lose their empire over me. In the lively expression of the poet, they are the elements of life,' without which man would be a mass of insensible and unintelligent matter. Now, it is that happy compound of these elementary particles of intellectual life, that you so well describe, so thoroughly understand, and so happily possess, which I despair of attaining. I have the resolution to make resolutions, but it extends no further; I cannot keep them and to escape from the misery brought on by one passion, I have so habituated myself to bathe in a branch of the same flood, that I cannot look for any other relief. You very naturally ask me where all this must end. I know not !—and to similar interrogatories I have sometimes madly replied, I care not!-But I will not offend you with such a declaration; and when writing to you, I do not feel disposed to do it. In answering you, therefore, I shall adopt the language of the ruined gamester, who addressed his shadow in the glass, 'Je vous ai dit et redit, Malheureux! que, si vous continuez à faire de pareils tours, vouz iriez à l'hôpital.'

"You lay great stress upon the powers of Reason, and, in truly philosophical language, heightened by the most proper and affecting ima gery, present this sage directrix of weak mortals to my attention. I receive her at your hand, respect her as your friend, and venerate ber as the cause of your superiority over me; but whether she perceives that my respect is insincere, or remembers how shamefully I have neglected her, so it is, that she slides insensibly from me, and I see her no more.-My bark rides steady for a

moment, but it is not long ere it again becomes the sport of winds and billows. But, after all, and without any blasphemous arraignment of the order of Providence, permit me to ask you, Why is this principle, implanted in our natures for the wise and happy regulation of them, so weak in itself, so slow in its progress, and so late in its maturity? If it is designed to controul our passions, why does it not keep pace with them? wherefore does it not grow with their growth, and strengthen with their strength? and what cause can be assigned that the one are ripe for gratification, before the other has scarce burst into blossom? Let us, however, take a long stride from the imbecility of youth to the firmness of mature age; and we shall see that the passions have only changed their form, that Reason still totters, is frequently driven from her throne, and even deserts those who have most cultivated her friendship, and acknowledged her power. The contest frequently continues through life, and the superiority as often ends, where it always begins, on the side of Passion. We may be said, even sometimes to outlive Reason; while passion, of some kind, and, many times, of the worst kind, will preserve its influence to the last. To conclude the matter, how often does the lamp of human Reason become extinct, yielding corporeal nature a prey to passion in the extreme, whose tortures are rendered more fierce by the iron restraints of necessary policy, and medical interposition.

"If it were possible to trace the course of reason in the mind of the best man that ever lived, from its first budding to a fulness of maturity, what a mortifying scene would

be unveiled! What checks and delays, what tranquillity and tumult, what frequent extinction and renovation, what rapid flights and sudden downfals, what contest and submission, would compose the operations of the rightful mistress of human actions! Men of cold tempers, and habituated to reflection, may cry up this distinctive faculty of man; they may chaunt its apotheosis, and build temples to its honour: such were Lord Shaftesbury and Mr. Addison; and they may be joined by those whose fortunate education, and early connexions have given to their warmer dispositions the best objects. In that confined, but happy society, I must place my friend, whose kind star preserved his youth from temptation, and blest his bloom of manhood with the ample and all-gratifying pleasures of virtuous love. You will not accuse me of wishing to diminish the reality of that merit which I so much admire, or of a desire to damp the glow of that virtue whose lustre cannot be diminished by my envy, or heightened by my praise; but, in the course of human affairs, time and chance have so much to do, that I cannot suppose even your worth to be without some obligations to them.

"To conclude this very, very long letter, I must beg leave to observe, that I do not understand why Reason, that divinity of philosophers, should be cooped up in the narrow region of the brain, while the Passions are permitted to range at large and without restraint through every other part of the body. I see you smile; but be assured that these two jarring powers are, for a moment, both united in one, to assure you that I am, with a real sincerity, "Yours," &c.

NEGRO SLAVERY.-No. IX.

RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION OF THE SLAVES.

THE Rev. G. Bridges, of Jamaica, has accused Mr. Wilberforce of a most unfounded aspersion on the West Indies, in saying, "in defiance of all the documents within his reach, that the Negroes were strangers to all the blessed truths of Christianity." What Mr. Wilberforce said was this ;

"In my estimate of things, though many of the physical evils of our colonial slavery are cruel and odious, and pernicious, the almost universal destitution of moral and religious instruction among the Slaves is the most serious of all the vices of the West-Indian system." "It cannot be denied, that the Slaves, more especially the great body of the field Negroes, are practically strangers to the multiplied blessings of the Christian Revelation." "This, I am well aware, is an awful charge; but it undeniably is too well founded, and scarcely admits of any exception beyond what has been effected by those excellent, though but too commonly traduced and persecuted, men the Christian Missionaries. They have done all that it has been possible for them to do; and, through the Divine blessing, they have indeed done much, especially in the towns, and among the household Slaves, considering the many and great obstacles with which they have had to contend."

Now we should have supposed that there was nothing in this statement to which Mr. Bridges would not readily have assented, and which he would not, as a Christian minister, have united with Mr. Wilberforce in deploring, especially as he can refer, when it suits his argument to do so, to" the immorality of the Negroes, the indiscriminate inter

course of the women," &c. as so prevalent, "though now giving way," as to be a main cause of the decrease of population (p. 14): and as he can employ it as a reason for rejecting the evidence of Slaves in a court of justice, that, according to Mr.Wilberforce's own account, "the Negroes as yet know nothing of the precepts of Christianity, consequently know nothing of the nature and obligation of an oath." (p. 20.) He even apologises for the fact, by saying, that it cannot be surprising that a stubborn race of idolatrous barbarians should not in twenty years have become intelligent, moral, and virtuous (p. 36).

*

But we do not mean to content ourselves with this argumentum ad hominem, in our vindication of Mr.

Mr. Bridges would seem by this expression to limit the efforts of the planters and clergy of Jamaica to convert the Negroes to Christianity within the last twenty years. We shall hereafter shew that they have a much more recent origin. The agitation of the Registry Bill in this country led in 1816 to the Curates' Act of Jamaica, which gave to the clergyman a fee on the baptism of each Slave. And that Act

the clergy to multiply baptisms even by appears to have stirred up the zeal of thousands in a single year. It ought, however, to be known, that no less than 120 years before the Curates' Act was passed, the 45th clause of the Slave Law of 1696 required, that "all masters and mistresses, owners, or in their absence overseers, shall, as much as in them lies, endeavour tian religion; to facilitate their conversion; and shall do their utmost to fit them for baptism; and, as soon as conveniently they can, shall cause to be baptised all such as they make sensible of a Deity and the Christian faith." This clause was repeated on almost every subsequent consolidation of the Slave Laws: but it remained, even according to Mr. Bridges, absolutely a dead letter until about twenty

the instruction of their Slaves in theChris

years ago; or rather, as we shall shew, it continues to this hour little more than a dead letter, a mere mockery both of legislation and of the Christian religion.